Cook claims that OLED's are poor in 'Jobs on Flash' history repetition

Is Apple Cook's certainty that Retina displays beat OLED displays a 'flash in a pan'?

Cook's railing against OLED technology at the Goldman Sachs conference last week, has been compared to Steve Jobs claims that HTML5 was a better option than Flash.

In his keynote at the event last Tuesday, Cook slammed the picture quality and colour saturation of OLED displays, while speaking about whether Apple would produce an iPhone with a bigger screen.

He said: "If you look at displays - if you kind of contrast this to displays - some people are focused on size. There's a few other things about the display that are important. Some people use displays - like OLED displays, the color saturation is awful. If you ever buy anything online, and you want to really know what the color is, as many people do, you should really think twice before you depend on the color of the OLED display."

He went on to describe how the Retina display is "twice as bright as an OLED display".

"I only bring these points up to say there are many attributes of a display, and what Apple does is sweat every detail. We care about all of them, and we want the best display. And I think we've got it. I feel great about it," he said.

A Motley Fool report compares Cook's certainty that Apple has a better solution, to late Apple CEO Steve Jobs' dismissal of Flash on the iPad.

"With capabilities including screen flexibility and near indestructibility, it's difficult to see how picture quality will compete with the display options that OLED make possible," writes The Fool's Doug Ehrman.

The report also notes the buzz from OLED technology demonstrated by Samsung at CES. "One of the innovations Samsung demonstrated at the CES was the functionality possible if an OLED screen is wrapped around the side of the device," writes Ehrman.

Of course, Cook's comments about OLED shouldn't be taken to indicate that Apple will avoid that technology. Especially as it recently emerged that Apple has been hiring experts in the OLED space (specifically Jueng Jil Lee, a senior researcher at LG who had been working on creating a printed AMOLED TV based television display).